Monday, February 2, 2009

Fringe.

"If you take a moment and look closely at the things you pass by everyday: a color, a shape, a pattern... because what you see really depends on what you're looking for."

Okay so I don't actually watch Fringe although I have been wanting to start and I actually watched the beginning of one episode, but creepy 'butterflies' cutting into human skin like glass was just too eerie for me.

The trailer - I love the graphics. The words are inspiring.

It's true... what you see really depends on what you're looking for. I wish it was easier to be open, to look at things without any pre-judgements or pre-conceptions. It's like what I told Rick over the weekend: don't act nice if you don't want to, don't be fake, but don't be mean either - just be open and don't go in with the thought that you already hate or dislike it, just be open each and every moment. Let your mind judge at the moment, but don't carry those judgements any farther than the now.

So I haven't written in this blog for quite some time now. I always get right to it once Orbie reminds me that it's there and it's waiting. Actually it's not that I forget... I've just had trouble gathering my thoughts. I've had trouble finding the words because trust me there's a lot to be said, but so little words to truly express it.

We're limited. Limited by the amount of communication we're honestly capable of. The ambiguity of one word, one thought, or one emotion. Not only are we inevitably limited, but we tend to limit ourselves. We hold back our feelings, we fail to communicate. We fail to tell each other how we truly feel whether it's amazing, good, bad, or horrible.

I appreciate true honesty - I really do. Even if I might get upset at people being 'too honest' sometimes, but that upset feeling goes away and respect and trust are further built. And it's about being honest to the person that needs to hear it. Sometimes we don't have a problem with communicating how we feel - we tend to have a problem with communicating how we feel to the right person - the person that it matters to most.

It's true... if you take a moment and look closely at the things you pass by everyday it just depends on what you're looking for. We see what we want to see. I'm in this music course, but we're learning about the brain and how music is processed and the effect that it has on the brain. I learned that we use the left side of our brain when fabricating stories. "The left brain makes up stories based on the limited information it gets. Usually it gets the story right, but it will go to great lengths to sound coherent." So pretty much our brain is creating the story to give us what we want, what we think is there. It's a tricky thing.

What's so bad about not getting what we want? What's so wrong about being wrong? Why are we fearful of failing? I wish I could make my mind think differently and be more open to failure. That fear keeps us from a lot of great things in life: living, honesty, trust, a pattern, a shape, a color.

To end, I'll end with another quote. A speech from the show Jack and Bobby by Grace McAllister at her attempt to make an inspiring speech for the university's students. The writers inspired me:

"You will fail here, all of you. College is not the culmination of your high school career, it is the beginning of your adult life. Only its a slow sweet beginning. It feels nothing like what life and all its attending obligations will eventually bring, so fail here. Be bad at things. Be embarrassed. Be afraid. Be vulnerable. Go out on limb or two or twelve and you'll fall and it'll hurt, but the harder you fall the farther you'll rise. The louder you fail the clearer your future becomes. Failure is a gift, welcome it. There are people who spend their whole lives wondering how they became the people they became, how certain chances passed them by, why they didn't take the road less traveled. Those people are not you. You have the front row seats to your own transformation and in transforming yourself you might even transform the world and it'll be electric, I promise you. It'll be terrifying, but embrace that. Embrace the new person you're becoming. This is your moment. I promise you it is now. Now - not two minutes from now, not tomorrow, but really now. Own that, know that deep in your bones and go to sleep every night knowing that and wake up every single morning remembering it and then... keep going."